


Trouble In My Town

by Sholio



Category: Alliance-Union - C. J. Cherryh
Genre: Bar Room Brawl, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-22
Updated: 2019-12-22
Packaged: 2021-01-24 04:22:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,595
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21332200
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sholio/pseuds/Sholio
Summary: Graff has an errand. He's not the only one.
Comments: 24
Kudos: 30
Collections: Yuletide 2019





	Trouble In My Town

**Author's Note:**

  * For [opalmatrix](https://archiveofourown.org/users/opalmatrix/gifts).

The halls leading to the Viking Station brig were industrial, gray, and cold, as if to emphasize that the station wanted incarcerated parties to sit and think about what they'd done. Graff's breath drifted in the air like smoke as he followed the station security officer, a young dark-haired woman -- of course, they were all young to him these days; he couldn't keep track of stationers coming and going, living their mayfly lives. 

She left him at the duty desk, where he got curious looks from a couple of alterday trainees doing paperwork. They probably didn't see ship coveralls much outside the docks. It was warmer here, at least, and there was a carpet.

"You're from _Norway?"_ the bored-looking desk sergeant said, glancing at his patches. "Looks like we got -- how many of yours?"

"We're missing eleven." And he was going to personally strangle all of them once he got his hands on them.

It seemed to take an interminable time for the sergeant to check his computers, ticking things off against a list. "Yeah. That checks out. Looks like the rest are from _Loki._"

Graff didn't particularly care, especially since he suspected Signy was tearing strips off Captain Wolfe over the comms right now. "That part's above my pay grade. Now look, I'm mainday shift and it ended six hours ago, so if you don't mind, I'd like to be getting on with this ..."

"Yeah." The sergeant got up, reached for a key card, then looked up and seemed to realize Graff was alone, with no escort except the local he'd come in with. "You gonna need some people to take them back?"

It was a stationer question, something no spacer would have even thought to wonder about, and Graff controlled his surge of annoyance -- barely. The lack of sleep didn't help. "They'll come. Don't worry about it."

The sergeant rolled his shoulders; _on your head be it,_ the gesture said. "Wait here," he said, and slouched off along the corridor.

"Really?" Graff said to his back, even more annoyed now.

He leaned his hip on the edge of the desk and was still sitting there when a woman strode in, with a wild glint in her eye that tipped Graff off to the nature of her errand, even if the _Loki_ patches hadn't given it away. She stopped and stared, dismayed, at the empty desk, then gave Graff a sharp look.

"They're getting mine," he said. "Guess you're here for yours?"

"Yessir," she said, taking a deep breath; started to say something else, then hesitated.

He eyed her curiously. He'd assumed _Loki_ was going to leave their wayward crew members in the brig overnight to cool them off; he'd picked up that much from Signy. But here she was. Not an officer, he didn't think. Some alterday underling, dispatched on an errand neither Wolfe nor his alterday X-O could be bothered to handle? YEAGER, her name patch said. 

Then he caught sight of the bruise on her cheek; she'd turned her head, trying to keep that side of her face away from him. There were a couple of suspicious stains on her coveralls. She hadn't come here from the ship. "Listen, Yeager," Graff began, but just then the sergeant came back.

"Yeah, we got 'em," he said, and frowned at the new development that had come along to further ruin his shift. "And you are?"

"Yeager, sir. From the _Loki,_ sir."

"Well, that's convenient. You can both get yours at the same time." He jerked his head. "This way, then."

Another gray corridor, steel door with a manual handle lock that the sergeant had to put his back into. It opened with a bang, and the near-quiet of the hallway and hissing of the ventilation system was suddenly filled with a babble of voices.

"-- give me _one minute_ over there, you'll be saying that out of the other side of your face --"

"-- oh, what's the matter? That eye giving you trouble? I'll even 'em out for you --"

_"For fuck's sake,"_ Graff said, not yelling, but loud enough. The voices died away suddenly into a guilty hush.

It looked like they'd divided them up with _Norway_ on one side of the aisle between holding cells and _Loki_ on the other. Stupid arrangement -- they could see each other straight across the aisle, just too far away from each other for physical violence, but still close enough to keep the fight going, from the look of things. At least they hadn't put them in the same cell.

Maybe letting them cool their heels in a cell overnight wouldn't have been a bad idea, Graff thought, and he strode down the aisle and did his best (well-practiced) looming over the scuffed and bruised _Norways_ in the cell. Including his star rider crew, who looked at least as worse for wear as the rest of them. The only person not visibly bruised was Pollard, who was sitting sullenly on a bunk as far away from the others as he could get.

"We didn't start it," Kady said, shifting away from Dekker, who was poking at a bruise on her head.

"Shut up," Graff said. 

There was a minor babble from the _Loki_ cell as Yeager walked in, and a couple of the _Norway_ crew jumped to their feet with murder in their eye, including Dekker and Aboujib. Pollard exchanged a look with Kady and they lunged and got hold of their crewmates, one pair of fists on each set of coveralls.

"I think we better take them out separately, don't you?" Yeager said quickly. "I'll take mine first, if you don't mind?"

Graff eyed his murderous-looking crew and the nervous and relieved-looking _Loki_ bunch. Things began to fall together in his mental reckoning of events. Yeager had definitely been involved in the brawl, and then she must've evaded the security sweeps, gone and hidden somewhere; that was some impressive resourcefulness on display. And then rather than going back and checking in to her ship and claiming innocence ("I was nowhere near, I swear!" -- he'd heard it before more than once), she'd come to get her crewmates: save them however much time their captain planned to leave them detained, maybe save them all from punishment depending on how much Wolfe knew of what exactly had happened on the station ... or maybe just getting to share in their punishment. Still, he respected loyalty when he saw it.

"Sure," he said, and Yeager relaxed a fraction. "Go for it."

"Oh, come _on!"_ Aboujib protested. "I owe a punch in the face to that -- er --" Graff turned his stare on her, and she dropped her gaze. "Sir."

"If I hear another word out of anyone in this cell, that person stays here until we're ready to pull out," Graff said.

They subsided into sullen silence, and Graff stood aside as the _Loki_ crew filed out of their cell. Yeager counted them off; some of them brushed past her without acknowledgement, while others had a slap on the arm for her, a nudge in the shoulder. Graff's crew continued to glare at her. She kept her chin up and ignored them. 

"Good luck," Graff told her, as the last of the _Lokis_ left and she turned to follow them. She looked back, a quick smile startled out of her, and then she was gone.

"Seriously?" Dekker said. "We're gonna let her get away with --" At that point all three of his crewmates piled on him to shut him up. Kady clapped a hand over his mouth and Pollard had his arm in a tight grip.

"Let them out," Graff told the sergeant. "They'll behave." He smiled sweetly at them. "Else I get to report back to our captain that the _Lokis_ did better. I'm sure that'll go well."

That seemed to work well enough, and soon he had a tight little cluster of bruised, sulky, slightly drunk representatives of the Alliance's finest. He could tell that the adrenaline was wearing off and they were starting to figure out that they'd messed up somewhere along the way. Well, good. They'd know it for sure when he got them back to _Norway_ and Di got a chance to have a word with them. Not to speak of Mallory.

He waited to ask the question until they were out of security and back under the curving arch of the docks' inner ring, in the great echoing space of the alterday docks, where the mainday bustle had died down and left the docking ring relatively quiet. There was no sign of the _Loki_ crew; they must've hopped a cargo transport to get back to their ship this fast. That Yeager had a head on her shoulders. If Wolfe ever decided he wanted to give her up, Graff wouldn't mind finding a place for her.

But right now his main problem was his own wayward trouble-raisers. And there was one person in the group that he figured would give him an honest answer. He dropped back and asked Pollard, "So who did throw the first punch, anyway?"

Pollard looked like he was considering various political angles on how to answer, but he came back with, "Dekker."

Dekker turned around and, walking backwards, threw his arms out in an elaborate gesture of exasperation and betrayal. Kady grabbed his arm and got him straightened out and pointed forward again.

"Yeah," Graff said, "thought so," and he went ahead to make sure Signy was briefed on what was headed her way. Yeah, he couldn't _wait_ until Di got done with them.


End file.
